Much significance is being attached to Mayawati’s participation in the lunch hosted by Mrs Sonia Gandhi to forge opposition unity for Presidential election. By attending the high profile meeting with other opposition leaders, she was demonstrating her keenness to end her isolation. Significantly enough she has also had a meeting with her so far arch rival Akhilesh Yadav.

There are indications that with the mediation of RJD president and former Bihar chief Minister Lalu Yadav, Mayawati and Akhilesh are ready to cooperate to take on the BJP, which has emerged as the main force in the state by grabbing 325 seats in the assembly. Going by the arithmetic, if Congress, SP and BSP votes had been combined then BJP would have got only 90 seats, but then politics is not governed by simple arithmetic.

Lalu has promised Mayawati that his party would send her to Rajya Sabha as her party has only 19 seats in the UP assembly. If Lalu has his way, Akhilesh and Mayawati are expected to address joint rallies in the near future as part of a grand design to take on the BJP, although it is too early to reach any conclusion.

Mayawati has appointed her brother Anand in a key position, giving the impression to her party leaders and cadre that he could be her successor. For the first time, she also appointed spokespersons for the party. So far, Mayawati has acted as the sole spokesperson.

The BSP leader expelled senior party leader Nasimuddin Siddiqui on the pretext of bungling in the membership fee, but the fact remains that he was sacked for his failure to garner support of the Muslim community in the assembly polls. Siddiqui was responsible for the distribution of tickets to over 100 Muslim candidates. She was heavily banking on a combination of Muslims and Dalits to grab power but her calculations went wrong as the party could not get support from the Muslim voters despite several appeals from Muslim clerics in favour of BSP candidates.

Siddiqui has released several audio tapes seeking to damage Mayawati’s credibility on the issue of funds collection. She had already been facing a serious charge of selling party tickets to higher bidders for both the assembly and Lok Sabha polls. As part of a damage control exercise, Mayawati has brought back a large number of middle rung Muslim leaders, who she had sacked earlier. Some of them had contested the assembly polls on Samajwadi Party tickets. The re-induction of sacked leaders and workers shows Mayawati’s desperation to save her vote bank and revive the party to take on BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Her visit to Saharanpur to meet the families of Dalits who were victims of the recent caste violence is very significant from this perspective. It is for the first time in many years that she decided to visit a trouble spot of caste-communal violence and this is seen as a move to reassure voters that she is very much with them. In her address there, she blamed the BJP government for the violence and assured the Dalits that she would fight for them.

Observers feel Mayawati is scared of the rising popularity of Bheem Army chief Chandrashekhar and the growing influence of his team over Dalits, which was clearly demonstrated through the impressive dharna in Delhi recently. She realizes that she is on a slippery ground as her vote share is on the decline and in view of the massive mobilization of Dalits by Bheem Army, which could be a potential threat to her party in the near future. (IPA Service)